- -a.
The Commoner.
WILLIAM J. BRYAN, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
- V
- 7
VOL. 11, NO. 20
Lincoln, Nebraska, May 26, 1911
Whole Number 540
Ihe trusts Have Won
The decision in the Standard Oil case will prove disappointing to the country. The dissolution of the Standard Oil company works no
hardship when the supreme court decision is virtually a license to reorganize under a pledge of greater security. No wonder the stock of
the Standard Oil company went up five and one-half points when the decision was announced! Tobacco trust stock went up fifteen points,
and the head of the Steel trust praises the opinion. The real meat of the decision is to bo found in the AMENDMENT of the anti-trust
law to meet the demands of the trusts. For several years the trusts have been demanding the very amendment that the court has read into
the law. There will be rejoicing in Wall street, but there will be sadness in the homes of the masses who are now compelled to begin a cam
paign for the enactment of an anti-trust law so clear and explicit that the court can not repeal it by construction. The decision explains
several things. First, it explains why Justice White was made chief justice instead of Justice Harlan. Second, it, explains why Governor
Hughes was made a justice of the supreme court. Third, it explains the discriminating care exercised by the president in selecting demo
crats who would help the republicans out of a hole by maiding the democratic party bear some of the odium of a decision that builds a
bulwark around the predatory corporations. And, fourth, it explains why Wall street went over to Mr. Taft in March or April of 1908
and then coerced their employes and the business public into the support of the republican candidate in November. "Who will appoint the
judges?" was the question raised toward the close of the campaign and Mr. Bryan was given an opportunity to decline to make any pledges.
The people will learn after a while, what the corporations have long known, namely, that the power to appoint United States- judges is a far
reaching power. The people agitate and congress legislates to little effect so long as the highest court in the land is in sympathy with
those who exploit the public. The amendment which the court makes by judicial construction is the very amendment which Mr. Taft
suggested in his Columbus speech when he announced his candidacy, and now the judges whom he appointed have so voted as to make it
unnecessary to secure the amendment by legislation. Now let those, democrats and republicans, who are opposed to trusts, set to work to
overcome the decision by legislation. The democratic plan will.be found in the following plank of the democratic platfprm of 1908:
"A private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable; there foiavor the vigorous enforcement of the crimmalTuw'againsf guilty
trust magnates and officials, and demand the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it impossible for a
private monopoly to exist in the United States. Among the additional remedies, we specify three: First, a law preventing duplication
of directors among competing corporations; second, a license system which will, without abridging the right of each state to create
corporations, or its right to regulate as it will foreign corporations doing business within its limits, make it necessary for a manufacturing
or trading corporation engaged in interstate commerce to take out a federal license before it shall be permitted to control as much as 25 per
cent of the product in which it deals, the license to protect the public from watered stock and to prohibit the control by such corporation
of more than 50 per cent of the total amount of any product consumed in the United States, and, third, a law compelling such licensed
corporations to sell to all purchasers in all parts of the country on the same terms, after making due allowances for cost of transportation."
THE TENDENCY OP COURTS
Justice John M. Harlan is respected every
where. He is admittedly one of the world's
great jurists and one of the world's great pa
. triots. He may not be called "an enemy of the
courts." He is, however, a friend of popular
government and in his now famous dissenting
opinion he referred to the tendency of the courts
in this way:
"We hear that the time has come when we
should hold up the light of reason and look at
this act, as if the men of that day, freshly after
the passage of the act, were moving about in
CONTENTS
THE TRUSTS HAVE WON
EVEN THE TENNESSEE DEAL
SOME THOUGHTS ON "THE RULE
OP REASON"
GOVERNOR DIX ON THE INCOME TAX
POLITICS AND "BIG BUSINESS"
JUSTICE JOHN M. HARLAN'S GREAT
DISSENTING OPINION
EYE-OPENERS ON EPOCH MAKING
DECISION
. MARK-HANNA VINDICATED
OPINIONS ON THE DECISION
- PRACTICAL TARIFF TALKS
HOME DEPARTMENT
WHETHER COMMON OR NOT
WASHINGTON NEWS
NEWS OF THE WEEK
darkness and did not know what they were
doing or saying.
. "In the now not very short life that I have
passed in this capital and the public service of
the country, the most alarming tendency of this
day, in my judgment, so far as the safety and
integrity of our institutions are concerned, is
the tendency to judicial legislation, so that,
when men having vast interests are concerned,
and they cannot get the law-making power of
the country which controls it to pass the legis
lation they desire, the next thing they do is to
raise the question in some case, to get the court
to so construe the constitution or the statutes
as to mean what they want it to mean. That
has not been our practice.
"The court, in the opinion in this case, says
that this act of congress means and embraces
only unreasonable restraint of trade, in flat con
tradiction to what this court has said fifteen
years ago that congress did not intend.
"Practically the decision I do not mean the
judgment but parts of the opinions are to
effect practically that the courts may, by mere
judicial construction, amend the constitution of
the United States or an act of congress. That
it strikes me is mischievous; and that is the
part of the opinion that I especially object to."
rest of the court united in repealing the anti
trust law for the Standard Oil decision was
not a construction of the law there was noth
ing to conBtrue it was a repeal of the law
without asking the consent of congress or the
president.
EVEN THE TENNESSEE DEAL
Speaking to a New York Herald representa
tive concerning the trust decision Emerson Me
Millin, of Emerson, McMillin & Co., said: "The
decision has great value. I hope the American
Tobacco case will be decided on Monday and
will not go over until fall. The definition and
limitation of the words 'reasonable' and 'un
reasonable' in Itself is of undoubted benefit.
"I should not be surprised to see investiga
tion of the Steel Corporation dropped. Under
this Interpretation and limitation of the law
the United States Steel corporation's purchase
of the Tennessee Coal and Iron company was
well within the law, and was far from unreason
able restraint of trade."
Of course, under this interpretation and limi
tation of the law the trusts have a free field
and the people need expect no favors.
READ THE HARLAN OPINION
Justice Harlan's dispentlng opinion will be
found on another page. Read it. He has filed
several dissenting opinions but none of them will
be quoted more than this one. It was fortunate
that there was one judge to champion the
people's side of this great question. Of course,
he was not the proper man for chief justice It
would have looked bad to have the chief justice
defending the people from the trusts and all the
QUIT IT
The Houston (Texas) Post says: "The New
York Tribune is authority for the statement that
Mr. Bryan is now against free wool and is rather
in accord with Underwood and the speaker.
Quite a number of the statesmen are getting
free wool pulled from over their eyes."
If the Houston Post would quit taking its
facts, as well as its politics, from high protective
tariff organs it would be a better historian and
might, in time, claim to be a democrat.
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